Championing Equality: Zappone & Gilligan in UCD

On Thursday evening, I had the delightful pleasure of helping to organise the Equality Society's Inaugural annual lecture with guest speakers, Katherine Zappone & Ann Louise Gilligan. I was going to be lazy and not post about this, but the beauty and love that I felt personally at this event was too much to ignore. I have been following the KALcase since it started in 2004, I even have the breakingnews.ie article on pdf from when it was first announced they would be seeking judicial review against the Revenue Commissioners. I was in the States at the time and remember feeling a sense of immense pride that something, anything was happening finally with my rights. I was only on the process of coming out, and having all those mid-phase hangups, but this happened around the October/November of 2004, and coupled with a number of other factors, I came out to the last of my mates in the Carolina Global Community in USC. I remember commenting at the time to a mate, that I didnt hold any faith in the Irish Judiciary in making a decision of this magnitude, thus far this has proven to be the case. We shall see how the Irish Supreme Court reacts when the case goes before it sometime this year or early next year.

However back to the event, Judy Walsh, chair, opened the talk by discussing the need for further societal acceptance for affective equality which set the tone nicely for the rest of the talk. Ann Lousie spoke first, describing Rawls second principle of Sameness to the gasps of some of us who are not necessarily in favour of Rawls Theories of Justice and his belief in the inherent selfishness of man. She then contrasted this with Iris Young's theory of Difference with this and used these two theories to describe the current debate about Gay Civil Marriage and whether it was assimilationist or not. Speaking about how Katherine and her met, she advised that in 1981 Boston College only had 2 PhD studentships available. Ann Louise got one. Katherine got the other. A Match that has lasted up to this day.

Katherine began to speak then, whilst Ann-Louise looked on, about the beginning of their work in Brittas, West Tallaght and the beginning of their community centre which operated out of their backyard from 1983 up until the late 1990s, when it moved to a purpose built building and was renamed 'An Cósan' and is still in operation providing second chance education in West Tallaght.

Then Ann Louise talked about their relationship and their decision to marry in 2003 in Canada. She described how it was a complete family occasion. To have their commitment to each other recognized civilly through the state, she acknowledged was a beautiful experience. She said that "Some people ask us, if it made a difference to our lives. I can honestly say that it has". Coming home from Canada, they did as all returning newly-weds did and registered their marriage with the state's institutions. And Revenue declined to accept their marriage due to the Oxford dictionary's definition of marriage being a heterosexual institution of "one man and one woman". Rightly they proceeded with a judicial review of their case, and as already outlined it is currently set to be heard sometime by the end of this year or early 2009.

The talk ended shortly after that, but not after they both instilled a sense of the love and Commitment which they feel for each other. Anybody who up to this point had doubted the motives of these two women, as just two lesbians looking for tax breaks, would be severly pushed to hold onto that stance by the end of this talk.

To say that this event has change my life, would be a lie. It has not. However It certainly is one of those events which shall be marked as an important facet of my life (take note you future biographers). I only hope that some day I will be able to enjoy a relationship of such commitment and love for even a brief amount of time.

Thank you.

Times Online: I resent her for still being alive

I resent her for still being alive

A reader describes her bitterness, anger and despair at having to care for her mother

As soon as she hears me stir, she calls out, “I could do a wee”, and as I rise my heart sinks. My own day ends right there and I begin another day – as a carer to my 98-year-old mother – by heaving her on to her commode. I hear her use it and then, face averted, take it to the loo and empty it. I bring her teeth; she fumbles in the bowl and pushes them in with a shaky hand. I should help her but I can’t bring myself to touch them.

Later on I make her breakfast, handfeed her and try, in vain, to ignore the dreadful mulching noises as she chews. I look away to avoid seeing her eyebrows wiggle up and down as she sucks from her straw through sunken lips.

I dispense her medication, prop her up on her pillows and switch on the first of those bloody talking books that play throughout the day, blowing away my concentration, peace of mind and privacy.

When I have to move her, endangering my back, I handle her through a towel or her dressing gown because I cannot bear to touch her skin. Everything about her revolts me now and I am ridden with guilt and pity. It’s not her fault. So it must be mine.

How have I ended up like this? What is wrong with me? Why am I like this? At 58, I am one of those awful people who prefer creatures on four legs rather than two, who hasn’t got a caring bone in her body as far as people go. I even avoided having children because I didn’t want to take responsibility for another’s life and I couldn’t face the thought of all the mess involved. Why do I find it so impossible to nurse this needy, wreckage of a human being, who has taken over my life, with a genuinely selfless good heart?

I could do it for the dog. When the animal was old and ill, I tended her with love and kindness and gentleness and never minded clearing up after her; I held her as she died and I wept and grieved. I loved her.

I cannot say the same about my mother and it is the guilt of this that binds me in this living hell.

My mother does not see, with her failing eyesight, the involuntary revulsion on my face when I take her to the toilet. I hope she does not realise, with her still alert mind, how much I resent her for still being alive. She’s had her life and now she’s having mine.

Why not put her in a home? Because with what little remains of my conscience, I have not the heart to consign her with her failing hearing and eyesight and physical frailties to a strange environment that she cannot visualise and doesn’t know, where she will be handled by strangers who she can’t hear or see properly. It’s too late for all that.

District nurses breeze cheerfully in and out of the house, tacitly disapproving of me in my dressing gown at 9am after another disturbed night, dispensing briskness and asuming that I am made of the equal efficiency and ability as they are.

“Here you are,” they say, handing over yet another tube of cream, “you can rub this in at night.”

“No I can’t,” I want to shout. “Don’t you understand? I’m not a nurse, I haven’t got a vocation for this, I haven’t had any training, it revolts me to touch her.”

But instead I nod dumbly and thank them and remind myself to buy some more disposable gloves.

“She’s marvellous, isn’t she?” say visiting relatives admiringly as they depart back to their own normal lives. “No, she isn’t,” I want to shout. “It’s me that’s effing marvellous!”

Few people voluntarily choose to become a carer. For me, as for many, it happened by stealth. I was in denial, hopelessly unsuited to the role, but by doing a bit more and then another bit more for her, I suddenly realised that my life had been taken over completely. I had become, involuntarily and without realising it, a carer. The situation had chosen me; I had no option.

I am occasionally offered “carer away days” when I am given the chance to meet with other carers and take advantage of free (not my italics) “taster sessions” of various alternative therapies and freelunches and tea and coffee to go with it. Oh, wow! Is it only me who finds these offers patronising and insulting? Am I being ungrateful? I am lost in astonishment and real grief that anyone (my italics) can even begin to think that a relentlessly cheerful day spent with other poor exploited saps and being given free anything can in any way at all compensate me for the wreckage of my life. Because that it what it is. It is a self-imposed jail sentence with no time off for good behaviour and no chance of escape........[contd.]

Source:Times.Co.Uk